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Government Secrets Can Be Pretty Killer

What can you say, dear, after you say I’m sorry … for
deliberately infecting you with syphilis as part of a secret
government experiment?

Secretary of State Clinton and Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius probably wondered as much a week ago
Friday, after having to issue an awkward joint apology for just
such a program — funded by the U.S. government from 1946 to
1948.

History shows that when
government officials operate behind an impenetrable veil of
secrecy, they’re capable of appalling abuses.

In that experiment — recently unearthed by a diligent
academic — the feds infected hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners
and mental patients. When diseased prostitutes failed to do the
trick, the docs injected the bacteria directly, via spinal puncture
or penis scrapes. A third of the victims never received proper
treatment.

This was the kind of news paranoiacs live for: “conspiracy
theorists, fire up your mimeographs,” Reason’s Radley
Balko joked.

Alas, the Guatemala syphilis experiment was hardly unique.
History shows that when government officials operate behind an
impenetrable veil of secrecy, they’re capable of appalling
abuses.

Consider:

In Cold War-era radiation
experiments, the U.S. government paid scientists to irradiate
prisoners’ testicles and give radioactive beverages to pregnant
women seeking free health care. On a 1963 memorandum proposing the
former study, a researcher wrote: “I’m for support at the requested
level, as long as we are not liable. I worry about possible
carcinogenic effects.”

In a 1950 germ-warfare test, the
U.S. military sprayed a massive bacterial cloud along the San
Francisco Bay area, using Serratia marcescens, an agent they
thought to be harmless.

Shortly thereafter, 11 people checked into Stanford Hospital with a
rare form of Serriata-induced pneumonia. One of them, retired pipe
fitter Edward Nevin, died.

When the truth came out in 1976, the experiment’s commanding
officer commented that it would’ve been “completely impossible to
conduct such a test trying to obtain informed consent.”

Informed consent complicated Cold
War objectives as well, top military officials concluded in 1962,
so they devised a plan for staged “pretexts which would provide
justification for U.S. military intervention in Cuba.” The
“Operation Northwoods” memo envisioned “exploding a few plastic
bombs in carefully chosen spots,” and “a ‘Remember the Maine’
incident,” sinking an American ship in Guantanamo Bay.

Phony casualty lists would cause “a helpful wave of national
indignation.” Luckily, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara vetoed the
plan, which had been unanimously approved by the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.

Wait, do I sound paranoid? Sorry, but right here under my
tinfoil hat, I’ve got the clippings to back these stories up.

The radiation experiments made the front page of the Los
Angeles Times (Jan. 8. 1994). For the germ warfare test, see
the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 22. 2001) and the San
Francisco Chronicle (Oct. 31, 2004).

Listen, I’m a patriotic, nonparanoid American. I don’t lose much
sleep worrying that today’s feds are irradiating people and giving
them diseases in the name of public health and national
security.

That’s not because I think human nature has recently been
transformed. It’s because, as the Cold War waned, Americans
recognized that sunlight’s a powerful disinfectant, and we passed
laws reining in executive secrecy.

In the wake of 9/11, though, the last two administrations have
fought hard to reverse that progress. Just before the
Clinton/Sebelius apology, President Obama’s legal team invoked the
“state secrets” privilege to shield scrutiny of its plan to
assassinate an American citizen abroad.

“I love my country, but I fear my government,” a popular Tea
Party sign proclaims. That’s the right attitude for a patriot
— now, and in the years to come.